What is the future of marketing and how company's will know your needs even before you know it?





What is the future of marketing and how companies will know your needs even before you know it?

We all come across ads on random websites and apparently the ad may relate to your recent search about a mobile phone, an air-conditioner, or simply an online course. The world has come way too far in terms of marketing but there is a lot of disruption that is still happening in the marketing domain and it is going to be all together a different experience that customers are going to witness in the coming two decades.

When was the last time you read an article about a phone. Yes, I thought so, you probably would watch our beloved Technical Guruji or the handsome Marques Brownlee for a review. The companies have realised that people have started to read less and watch more. Also, videos provoke more feel than a 2d printed design on a poster.

How companies will know your needs even before you know it?

With all the smart wearables that exist in the market like the Fitbit wearables ( recently acquired by google for $2.1 billion) and the Apple watches, the data about your heart rate is synced with your smartphones as well. Also in future the cameras on your phone will be able to guage your mood. With these technologies working together, it will be easier to sell you products. Now, you might wonder how? When you will scroll through a product online or watch any ad on a youtube video, the technology will be able to know whether there is a change in your mood or heart rate (the heart rate fastens when you are excited). This will make it easier for sellers to know in real-time what is it that you like and then will consistently target you with the ad of that product, so you eventually give the companies a return for their huge marketing dollars spent.

Future of Marketing:

  • Virtual reality and augmented reality: The arriving of the virtual reality and augmented reality has brought a possibility of a never thought of user experience. This has made it a confirmed future reality of bringing the feel of a brick and mortal model to an online e-commerce store where customers can try on the dresses, buy groceries with an immersive experience, feel the size of a television and its look in their living room or visit house after house to feel the ambiance and finish the hassle of house hunting.
  • Voice marketing: It is expected that every 1/8 houses will have a virtual assistant (Alexa, Google Home) sitting in their rooms by 2025 and the people will become comfortable with the human touch of devices and rely on it's recommendation to shell out some bucks from their wallets. The real fight will be for the marketing space though. When you search on google you don't go through all million pages. Companies pay heavily to come on the front page. Similarly when a user asks "Alexa which phone should I buy for under Rs.40,000?". There is going to be a lot of fight for the voice space based on demographic and preferences in that area.
  • Post privacy era: This will be an era of permissions, like literally a lot of permissions. In the future customers will give their user data for better recommendations from softwares and personalised discounts and offers. In the post privacy era, when everything will be transparent every ad will be mapped and tied to the different individuals. Since there will be no one-size fits all marketing approach, anything too promotional will be ignored, only something which will be related to the user will be seen. In this era, personalised marketing and an authentic story (product with a good review chain) will play a crucial role to make it work the charm.
  • Influencer marketing: This is something which is happening currently but which might scale to new heights in the future. We all follow certain people (instagram stars, youtubers, bloggers or for the fact TikTokers) or have some idols ( movie stars, philanthropists, celebrities). We follow them because we enjoy the content they produce or like them in an aesthetic sense. We feel so closely for them that we also buy products when they recommend a product. Companies have started to realise this trend and more and more companies are starting to follow this channel of advertisement for marketing. Few brands using this strategy are mama earth and wow(both sell beauty products in this case).
  • Big data holder: In the near future, the person with the data will be the king. If you know what your customer wants, at what time and at what price, you may be able to make a sale. But getting user data is costly and there is a thin line between getting user data with permissions and intruding in the user's space. Therefore, data hygiene is of utmost importance. The greater the control by a company over the data the greater is its chances of success. For eg. if you know a baby is born in a family and you make diapers, then your marketing dollars targeted at that family might lead to a converted sale. You might now know the reason why Facebook is valued at 100's of billions of dollars.
  • Artificial intelligence: AI can improve the user experience by understanding the actions of the customers, his searches, his responses to different ads and therefore interacting with the user on real-time basis (like facebook ads). It can also help to improve the customer experience by making customer queries and complaints dealt at very high speeds through the implementation of chat bots and automation. The AI will also be able to analyse the intent of the user, whether he will buy a product or not. A minor implementation can be seen in Swiggy and Zomato apps, but there is much more to it. AI will be able to suggest you a good pair of jeans or a watch that may look good on your wrist.The greater a marketer has ability to do content engagement analysis (like reaction of a user after watching a certain video), the better would be the AI's ability to help in selling a product.
  • Machine learning: Machine learning can improve a customers experience by focussing resources on what a customer uses. A small example would be, future smartphones will know which apps are used by user more frequently and at what timing. The phone will pre-load an application before the user clicks on the app. This will lead to faster delivery and better ram and cpu management. Similarly when marketers have a lot of data, they will be able to make more smarter customer segments, deliver more creative campaigns and measure the performance of the campaigns more effectively. It will make it easier to know the customer churn rate (how many customers end the services of a business or stop using a product) as well as aid in building dynamic price models. An example of dynamic price model is airline ticket prices which depend on the location of the seat, number of seats left and the time in how much advance you book the ticket.


Thanks for reading!
Please comment on any financial query you had like me to address. I will try to post something worthwhile.

Coming up Next: When is it completely okay for your business to be in losses?

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